The National Arbitration Forum announced today that a ruling has been issued in favor of Hillary Rodham Clinton regarding rights to the Internet domain name hillaryclinton.com.

Senator Clinton, represented by James Lamb of Ryan, Phillips, Utrecht and MacKinnon, filed a complaint with the National Arbitration Forum on February 1, 2005 asserting legal rights to the Web address bearing her name.

Ruling in Senator Clinton's favor, National Arbitration Forum arbitrator Tyrus R. Atkinson, Jr. found that the other party, Michele Dinoia, registered the hillaryclinton.com domain name on October 22, 2001, and was using the disputed domain name to direct Internet users to a Web site that displays a generic search engine, links to commercial Web sites, and exposes users to pop-up ads and pay-per-click search results. In addition, the disputed domain name would bookmark itself as the visitor's homepage each time he or she opened his or her Internet browser.

The arbitrator found that Dinoia did not have legitimate rights to the Web address hillaryclinton.com and that the Web address was confusingly similar to Senator Clinton's trademark rights in her own name. The arbitrator also found that Dinoia was using hillaryclinton.com in bad faith by presumably profiting from the use of it.

Senator Clinton's Internet domain dispute was one of thousands heard each year by the National Arbitration Forum under the Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy ("UDRP") of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers ("ICANN"). The domain name dispute process is a popular alternative to lengthy and expensive trademark lawsuits.

A copy of the decision, Hillary Rodham Clinton v. Michele Dinoia a/k/a SZK.com, is available for viewing online.